Three Years Under The Couch

Pepperoni, All Cheese, Hawaiian, Garden Special, Pizza Hut, Sbarro, Project Pie, pizza under your couch,  pizza there, pizza here, pizza everywhere!!!

Did you know that in Europe, they once called pizza as a “Poor man’s meal” because they just have to put what they have on top of a dough and just heat it. Well now, it’s one of the most common and well-known foods in the globe. With sizes ranging from bite size, to sizes as tall as five feet, anyone has access to it with just one dial on their phones.

With pizza being one of the most craved foods in the current era, innovations and different ways of presenting it has been presented. There are the pizza ice creams, where the pizza is shaped into a cone and ice cream is put on it. If you happen to be in the north of the Philippine islands, you will find a “Pizza Pinakbet” where “Pinakbet”, a famous viand, made of vegetables, in the country is put on top of it. In the recent years, pizzas with thick ends that has sausages, cheese and even cheeseburgers in it were introduced. 

Lately, thin crust has been a major trend in the leading pizza chains. Finally, observe that pizza chaines that offer large pizzas, with up to 50” or more in diameter, are slowly appearing like mushrooms.   More and more weird but catchy ways of eating and making pizza has roamed the crust of Earth but here’s something outrageous, a pizza that can last for three years… even without freezing it.

This idea began when the US military was surveyed bon what to be added on their “military meals ready to eat” or MREs. Every time that the survey was conducted, pizzas are always the winner. Unfortunately, pizzas are easily rotten and are not advisable as an MRE. After two long years of research, experimentation and failures, the scientists at the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center in Massachusetts are testing a prototype pizza to be included in the MREs.

Pizzas are easily perishable because of the combination of cheese, sauces, meat and vegetables that causes immediate bacteria growth. Now, to make the life of the pizza longer, the dough must not be entered by bacteria. The key that was used to solve this problem is to keep the water in place and make the whole pie hostile to bacteria.

 “To stop the dough from going soft, scientists used a type of preservative known as humectants, which include various kinds of gels and sugars (honey is sometimes used as one.) Humectants keep food moist by binding to water; in this case, they lock it into the rest of the ingredients. The pizza's acidity is also adjusted to make it less hospitable to bacteria, and iron filings in the package help absorb any air that gets into the packet. The result? "You can basically take the pizza, leave it on the counter, packaged, for three years and it'd still be edible."- an article by Adi Robertson at www.theverge.com/

With all these results and processes, you might say that all those processes will eventually take the “pizza experience” from the pizza by taking away its original taste. However, that’s not the case for these military pizzas. Scientists who tasted the military pizza compared the taste with the pizza stored in 80 degrees Fahrenheit for the same amount of time and it tasted the same. In fact, it tastes as if it was a fresh home-made pizza even after three years.  

With this evolutionary pizza, there will come a day when you will see a pizza under your couch. Don’t hesitate, dig in! 

Sources:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/14/5411508/military-pizza-prototype-lasts-three-years-without-spoiling

http://kotaku.com/military-pizza-could-last-up-to-three-years-1524684937